This week we interviewed Jean Berko Gleason, a psycholinguist who is now a professor emerita at Boston University, about how we learn and use the most valuable of skills: human language. She's best known for her wug test experiment, revealing that children develop general systems to learn language.

Wednesday night at 11:08, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, a man widely believed to be innocent. A last-minute delay went to the Supreme Court, where a stay of execution was denied.

Meanwhile in Texas, another man was executed. There was no widespread outcry for the life of Lawrence Brewer. His horrific crime was one of which he boasted, one in which there was no doubt of his guilt. He “deserved” to die.

The A&E television show Hoarders is hugely popular for so many reasons. Maybe we see our inner hoarder in their characters, or just want to be shocked at the sight of extreme stuff. But when writer Amy Gutman decided to declutter her storage space, she developed a fascinating idea about why our stuff is so important to us.

Amy Shelton with the tools of her work. (photo: Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins)

Psychologists who study learning and memory have a special interest in how people navigate reality in a three-dimensional world. There is a huge variation in abilities for spatial learning among adults, and some of these skills don’t even appear until adolescence. How you interact with other people has a lot to do with how well you are able to literally take their perspective.

On the heels of Krista’s morning interview with Matthieu Ricard, we’re going to live stream video of her conversation with cognitive researcher Adele Diamond. The live video will only appear real-time and then we will substitute it with higher-resolution produced video at a later date.

Update: The live video stream only aired during the period of the interview and is currently not available. I’ve substituted a photo until I can replace it with a full produced video taken with our HD cameras!